Monday, June 20, 2016

Donald Trump On Profiling of Muslims

Yesterday in a phone interview with program host John Dickerson on CBS's Face the Nation, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump spoke about the possibility of profiling Muslims in the wake of the attack in Orlando on a gay nightclub. Here is an excerpt from the full transcript:

DICKERSON: When you talk about political correctness, should a Muslim buying ammunition and weapons get extra scrutiny?

TRUMP: I don't know about that.

I think, right now, we have some pretty big problems. And there are problems coming out of radical Islamic -- the radical Islamic groups. You have a very, very strong group of people that is radical Islamic, and that seems to be a problem.

DICKERSON: And you said you would check respectfully the mosques. How do you respectfully check a mosque?

TRUMP: Well, you do as they used to do in New York, prior to this mayor dismantling.

By the way, if you go to France right now, they're doing it in France. In fact, in some instances, they are closing down mosques. People don't want to talk about it. People aren't talking about it. But look at what they're doing in France. They are actually closing down mosques.

DICKERSON: Can I ask you just a bottom-line question before we move on? You like to speak plainly. In December, we talked, and you said there possibly should be profiling. Just as a bottom line here, are you talking about increasing profiling of Muslims in America?

TRUMP: Well, I think profiling is something that we're going to have to start thinking about as a country. And other countries do it.

And you look at Israel and you look at others, and they do it. And they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling. But we have to start using common sense, and we have to use -- we have to use our heads.

I see people that -- and I have seen it recently. We had a case where very much in my case, where we had -- we had tremendous numbers of people coming into a speech I was making. And people that obviously had no guns, had no weapons, had no anything, and they were being -- they were going through screening.

And they were going through the same -- the same scrutiny, the absolute same scrutiny as somebody else that looked like it could have been a possible person. So, we really have to look at profiling. We have to look at it seriously.

And other countries do it. And it's not the worst thing to do. I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to use common sense. We're not using common sense.